Dinosaur Discovery Third - Fifth TEKS Third: 3.2A, 3.2C, 3.2D, 3.2F, 3.3A, 3.3D, 3.9A, 3.9B, 3.9C, 3.10A Fourth Grade: 4.2C, 4.2D, 4.2F, 4.3A, 4.3C, 4.3D, 4.9A, 4.9B, 4.10A Fifth Grade: 5.2C, 5.2D, 5.2F, 5.2G, 5.3A, 5.3D, 5.9A, 5.9B, 5.10A Vocabulary adaptations, consumer, dinosaur, extinct, food chain, food web, herbivore, omnivore, paleontologist, predator, prey, producer, theory Pre-Show Activity Pre-Show Lesson: Dinosaurs, Are You For Real? Post this question on the board: “How do we know dinosaurs are real?” Materials: Per class: a couple of dinosaur reference books, the book The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins: An Illuminating History of Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, Artist and Lecturer by Barbara Kerley Per group: various prehistoric animal pictures (Appendix A-1) Per student: two dinosaur skull pictures (Appendix A-2 and A-3) Procedure: 1. Ask students what they know about dinosaurs. Make a list on a chart. Go over the facts about dinosaurs. To be considered a dinosaur, an organism’s legs must have been underneath it. No dinosaurs ever lived in water. Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago. HMNS 3-5 Dinosaur Discovery Page 1 Have students act out being a dinosaur following the rules above. Ask them to repeat the facts about dinosaurs to a partner. Have them turn to another partner and repeat. Teacher Information: Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for over 160 million years, from the Triassic period around 230 million years ago through the Jurassic period and until the end of the Cretaceous period around 65 million years ago. The time period from 250 million years ago until around 65 million years ago is known as the Mesozoic Era. It is often referred to as the Age of the Dinosaurs because most dinosaurs developed and became extinct during this time. It is believed that dinosaurs lived on Earth until around 65 million years ago when a mass extinction occurred. Scientists believe that the event leading to the extinction may have been a massive asteroid impact or huge volcanic activity. Events such as these could have blocked out sunlight and significantly changed the Earth’s ecology. A person who studies dinosaurs is known as a paleontologist. Rather than being carnivores (meat eaters), the largest dinosaurs such as the Brachiosaurus and Apatosaurus were actually herbivores (plant eaters). To help fight meat eaters such as the Allosaurus or Spinosaurus, many plant eaters had natural weapons at their disposal. Examples of this include the spikes on the tail of the Stegosaurus and the three horns attached to the front of the Triceratops’s head shield. 2. Students will sort pictures of prehistoric animals as either a dinosaur or not a dinosaur. These are provided in Appendix A-1. You may also want to include pictures of modern day animals. Debrief as a class. Remember, scientists believe that birds are considered descendents of dinosaurs; present day reptiles are relatives of dinosaurs but not considered descendents because their legs are on the sides, not under them like dinosaurs. 3. Students sit together up front. Hold up some dinosaur resource books. Ask students how we know so much about dinosaurs today, if they were alive millions of years ago. How do we know what they looked like, ate, etc.? Students should understand that we learned about dinosaurs from studying their fossils. Ask: “What do you think it must have been like for the first people who discovered a dinosaur fossil? Do you think they knew right away what it was? How did they figure it out?” Much evidence had to be collected and put together and analyzed. HMNS 3-5 Dinosaur Discovery Page 2 4. Read The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins: An Illuminating History of Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, Artist and Lecturer by Barbara Kerley. This book explains how the theory of dinosaurs evolved. 5. Tell students that today they are going to be dinosaur fossil hunters, or paleontologists. Each student is going to get a dinosaur skull. Tell students to imagine that they know nothing about this skull or the belief in dinosaurs. No one has ever seen a dinosaur fossil before. They are going to do what scientists who study dinosaurs do and make inferences based on their observations of the skull. They are going to collect and analyze data. They need to ask themselves, “What can I tell about how this dinosaur lived by looking at its skull?” Students will create a T-chart. On one side they will list skull observations and on the other side, they will list inferences by telling how they think the body part they observed helped the dinosaur adapt and survive. Skull Observations Inference about the Organism Give each student a picture of a triceratops skull (Appendix A-2). Students may work with a partner or in groups, but each student should create their own T-chart like the one above in their science notebook. Once you have given them an appropriate amount of time, regroup and go over the following: Flat teeth: It ate plants (herbivore). You may want to model how flat teeth work by using two flat stones and a piece of lettuce or a green leaf. Have students feel their teeth with their tongue. Which ones are flat? Which ones do you use for mashing your food? Eyes on the side: It was prey to other animals. Eyes on the side, needs to hide. Horns: It was used as protection from predators. Turtle-like beak: It was used to clip through tough plants. Bony frill: Protected its neck. Large nasal cavity: It could smell its predators. Ask: “The triceratops has all these body parts or adaptations to protect it from predators. Who do you think its main predator was?” Answer: Tyrannosaurus rex Hand students a picture of a Tyrannosaurus rex skull (Appendix A-3). Ask, “What can we tell about Tyrannosaurus rex by looking at its skull? What adaptations did it have?” HMNS 3-5 Dinosaur Discovery Page 3 Sharp teeth: Used to tear meat. Eyes forward: This gave them depth perception, which means means that they could see the world in 3-D. 6. Students should have the two dinosaur skull pictures. They are to create a prehistoric food chain which includes both dinosaurs. Older students should create a food web. They can use the information below, or you may allow them to use the Internet or resource books to complete their food chain/web. Older students should label each picture as producer or consumer. They should further label each consumer picture as herbivore, omnivore or carnivore. What did dinosaurs eat? Some dinosaurs ate lizards, turtles, eggs, or early mammals. Some hunted other dinosaurs or scavenged dead animals. Most, however, ate plants (but not grass, which hadn't evolved yet). Rocks that contain dinosaur bones also contain fossil pollen and spores that indicate hundreds to thousands of types of plants existed during the Mesozoic Era. Many of these plants had edible leaves, including evergreen conifers (pine trees, redwoods, and their relatives), ferns, mosses, horsetail rushes, cycads, ginkos, and in the latter part of the dinosaur age flowering (fruiting) plants. Although the exact time of origin for flowering plants is still uncertain, the last of the dinosaurs certainly had fruit available to eat. Source: http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dinosaurs/food.html HMNS 3-5 Dinosaur Discovery Page 4 Post-Show Enrichment Activities Activity One: Three Facts and a Fib Materials: note cards, star stickers Procedures: 1. Students will write three facts that they learned from the show and one fib on a notecard. 2. They will put a star by the fib. 3. Collect these and read some of them out loud. 4. Students will try to identify the fib in each list you read them. Activity Two: Dinosaur Extinction Materials: dinosaur extinction article, internet Procedures: 1. Discuss with students what a theory is and how it becomes accepted in the general public. 2. Students will analyze the data from two popular theories related to the extinction of the dinosaurs and form their own opinion (Appendix A-4). They must state their opinion and give evidence to support it. Students can use the information below, library resources or Internet sites to find evidence to support their belief. 3. You can have the students blog about their opinions by setting up a classroom blog. There are free websites available to do this. 4. Take a class opinion survey and graph your results. You may also want to show a video on this topic. There are many free ones available on the Internet. Activity Three: Be a Paleontologist Materials: How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland, dinosaur bones, plastic shoe box, observation chart Procedures: 1. Read How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum by Jessie Hartland. HMNS 3-5 Dinosaur Discovery Page 5 2. Bury a set of dinosaur bones in a plastic shoe box of sand for each group. You can print the skeleton in Appendix A-5 on tag board or get some inexpensive plastic dinosaur skeleton sets on the Internet. 3. Tell students that they are going to become paleontologists for the day. In groups, students will dig up the dinosaur bones and piece them together. 4. For older students, you may want to have them make a grid of the shoe box area and tell them to map where they found the bones to mimic what paleontologists do. 5. Once they have finished, students should identify the dinosaur. They may need to use the Internet to identify it.